Editing Decree (section)

==United States==
{{main|Law of the United States}}
In US legal usage, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, a '''decree''' was an order of a [[court of equity]] determining the rights of the parties to a suit, according to equity and good conscience. Since the 1938 procedural merger of law and equity in the federal courts under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the term ''judgment'' (the parallel term in the common law) has generally replaced ''decree''. This is now true also in most state courts.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lehman |first1=Jeffrey |last2=Phelps |first2=Shirelle |title=West's Encyclopedia of American Law, Vol. 4 |date=2005 |publisher=Thomson/Gale |location=Detroit |isbn=9780314201577 |page=38 |edition=2}}</ref> The term ''decree'' is broadly treated as synonymous with ''judgment''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Matulewska |first1=Aleksandra |title=Semantic Relations between Legal Terms. A Case Study of the Intralingual Relation of Synonymy |journal=Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric |date=1 June 2016 |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=161–174 |doi=10.1515/slgr-2016-0022|s2cid=123298982 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

A decree is often a final determination, but there are also interlocutory decrees. A ''final decree'' fully and finally disposes of the whole litigation, determining all questions raised by the case, and it leaves nothing that requires further judicial action; it is also appealable. An ''interlocutory decree'' is a provisional or preliminary order that determines issues of fact or law in advance of a final decree, but leaves other issues to be resolved and thus does not resolve the litigation.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Brunsman |first1=Robert H. |title=Decrees and Their Enforcement |journal=University of Illinois Law Forum |date=1954 |volume=51 |page=41}}</ref> It is usually not appealable, although preliminary injunctions by federal courts are appealable even though interlocutory.<ref>[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preliminary_injunction Cornell Law School], Legal Information Institute.</ref>

[[Executive order]]s, which are instructions from the President to the executive branch of government, are decrees in the general sense in that they have the force of law, although they cannot override statute law or the Constitution and are subject to judicial review. Governors of individual states may also issue [[state executive order]]s.